This week, I am again presenting a fan favourite: an action excerpt from my first book, The Bones of the Earth. This passage comes from Part 2: Tests. In this section, the hero, Javor — cast out of his own village because of his autism and tendency to attract trouble — and Photius, the mysterious […]
Commas are probably the most abused punctuation mark in English today, and probably the most overused, too. Here are a few tips to make them easier to use correctly. Commas separate parts of a sentence: Don’t leave out commas from your writing. They represent the pauses in speech, and give readers a chance to take […]
By Kristen Elise, Ph.D.P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }A:lin Here’s a secret: publishers love the self-publishing author. When Scott asked me to do a guest post about marketing for newbie novelists, my first reaction was, “I don’t know anything about marketing — I’m a newbie novelist myself.” Then I received two contract offers for my first […]
Image: Creative Commons My hopes and prayers go to the families of everyone killed, wounded and hurt, traumatized and terrified by the bombs in Boston on Monday. My sympathies go to everyone who is struggling through the clean-up, the aftermath and the traffic snarls as the city recovers from the cowardly sneak attack. […]
A number of the reviewers of my first novel, The Bones of the Earth, mentioned how much they liked my fight scenes. So for your Sunday pleasure, here’s a sample of the first fight scene, in Chapter 6. In this section, the hero, Javor — the misunderstood, ostracized young man — has followed the trail […]
Image: Creative Commons I have learned a few things in the year since I published my first novel, The Bones of the Earth — even some things about publishing books. I tried to apply them when publishing my second book, One Shade of Red. I’ve known the importance of promotion and advertising any […]
“Edit” often is synonymous with “take out.” A lot of the work I do involves highlighting unnecessary text and pressing the Delete key. It’s a tough job. In order to make it easier (and you all want my work to be as easy as possible for me, don’t you?), I thought I would warn you […]